We tour the amazing scoring and recording facilities at Skywalker Ranch, the terrestrial home of Star Wars...
Set amid the rolling hills and lush forests or Marin County, about an hour outside of San Francisco, Skywalker Ranch is the spiritual home of Star Wars. Built and extended throughout the eighties, it's where George Lucas has his production company and where Skywalker Sound, the legendary audio facility originally known as Sprocket Systems, is based. "George planned Skywalker Ranch as a Mecca for filmmakers and creative artists of all kinds to come and make movies in Northern California," says our tour guide for today, David Collins, LucasArts' lead sound designer and voice director. "That was his dream, and Star Wars afforded him that dream?"
And true enough, the main building, a gleaming white architectural confection constructed in the style of a late-nineteenth century ranch house, is out of bounds today: a writer's workshop is being held there. Instead, we're closely chaperoned into the technology building ("no photos, no filming" is the constant refrain from Lucas staff) and assemble in the Stag theatre, the site's 300-seat screening room. It's a typically luxurious edifice with slight art deco leanings, the gargantuan speakers hidden behind the screens and the walls to maintain the clean design. We're told that the two golden statues at the front of the auditorium were originally part of Emperor Palpatine's office in Episode II. Lucas does love to recycle those props.
"This is George's premiere space to look at films," says Collins. "It's probably the most THX-certified room in the world. Everything is totally custom made. A lot of screenings go on here and at Skywalker Sound when they're making films, they'll come in here to review what they're mixing. Skywalker Sound boasts seven mix stages of various sizes: Avatar, Star Wars, Jurassic Park, Saving Private Ryan, all the Pixar films ? they were all mixed here. And in fact, when the building is very busy, they will remove several rows of chairs, put in a console and mix films right in this theatre."
Elsewhere in this building are 32 editing suites and 12 mixing 'pods' ("George has this idea that you should be able to edit and mix at the same time, because that's where digital technology has gone," says Collins). They're used not just by movie companies, but also for TV, advert and trailer work ? and video games, of course.
And then there is our next destination, the scoring stage, a cavernous arena the size and height of a generously-proportioned sports hall. It was built to record full symphonic orchestras and can accommodate up to 120 musicians. "The acoustics in this room make it one of the most flexible recording rooms in the world," says Collins. "There's quite a decay, but what's amazing is you can pull out a series of panels in the walls and completely deaden the sound. We can get the reverb down to about half a second if you want to record a rock band or something. There are also isolation booths so you can set up drums, vocals, guitars? anything you can think of."
The variety of music that's been recorded here is impressive. As well as orchestra work, they've had jazz big bands, pop groups like Nsync and rock bands like Joe Satriani's super group side project, Chickenfoot. We go through to the control room, adjacent to the scoring stage, and meet the award-winning in-house recording engineer, Dan Thompson, who's barely visible behind an enormous multi-channel mixing desk. "We have a lot of classical clients," he explains. "The Kronos Quartet have recorded many records here. The pianist Frederic Chiu has recorded 15 albums. We do a lot of video game scores ? Uncharted was done here. We did some work on SOCOM 4. And of course movie soundtracks ? Hellboy, Zodiac, Jurassic Park III?" I ask about the desk, and he explains it's a Neve 88R (there's a picture of it on the front page of Neve's website) ? "It's the only analogue desk in this building. It's the thing that heats this room," he jokes. "It also turns into a spaceship and takes off," adds Collins.
Right now, the room is set up for a string quartet ? there are just four chairs in the middle of the enormous space, surrounded by spot mics and large wooden slabs called diffusers, each sporting an irregular mosaic surface. "They give the sound a little bit of early reflection," explains Collins. "A lot of what gives a room its character is the way sound bounces off the walls. If you want to sound like a cathedral or a symphony hall this room is suitably cavernous. But for recording, say, a string quartet you want some early reflections in order to make the sound more interesting ? the diffusers provide that, because the sound bounces off them in interesting ways. The microphones pick that up and it brings out more of the harmonics of the instrument."
Collins talks about the chaos in here, when there's a full orchestra to record. "You've got a ton of chairs, a ton of stands ? all of which need to be lit. There are headphones, mics ? it's just a sea of cables." Navigating all this will be one sound engineer charged with checking the headphones, mics and settings for each musician during the session ? "this, by the way, is the coolest job ever," says Collins. "Being amongst the orchestra is just the most amazing sound. I mean, it's one thing to listen to a recording, it's another to be out there feeling the vibrations, feeling the air being pushed out at you. It's overwhelming."
In many ways, the process of recording game and movie soundtracks is similar. In both sectors, due to tight productions schedules, the orchestra will very rarely get any rehearsal time before a session: "They do one or two takes of each cue then they move on," says Collins. "These musicians are sight reading as they go, they're incredibly high calibre. A game will be recorded in one week. They just fly through it." For film soundtracks, the conductor does at least get to see what he's working with: a large screen at the back of the auditorium plays the relevant movie sequence, so he can conduct in time with the action.
For Force Unleashed II, LucasArts employed an 85-piece orchestra, featuring musicians from the San Francisco symphony and San Francisco opera. The team recorded an hour of brand new music for the game over three days and four sessions on the scoring stage. But this is where game and film music start to diverge. The TFU2 compositions then had to be blended in with elements from the original John Williams pieces as well as sections from the first Force Unleashed game to create a three-hour score that can be split into constantly interchangeable elements.
"With a film, you know that everybody's always going to be experiencing the exact same second of music, at the exact same time. It's a linear, passive experience," says music supervisor, Jesse Harlin. "But a video game is an active experience ? and because of that, it takes a very special type of composer who is able to plan for, and work with, essentially modular pieces that can be re-combined in the game engine, depending on what the player is doing. You have to be able to expect the unexpected."
The composer they use is Mark Gritsky, who also worked on Force Unleashed I. "Mark is one of my favourites," says Harlin. "There's a whole musical language to Star Wars that has been established by John Williams and Mark really understands the harmonic and melodic sensibilities that Williams created. He knows how to write new music that exists within the same world: you can seamlessly go from the music of John Williams to the music of Mark Gritsky and it feels like it's all part of the same universe."
Concludes tomorrow!
Part one is here
Part two is here
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/gamesblog/2010/oct/25/inside-star-wars-part-three
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